The 2017 Porsche 718 Boxster S Does Everything Right

"Honestly a 4cyl doesnt ever belong in a porsche, I mean why would people pay all that money to hear a 4cyl lawnmower ..."

This is, unedited, the first comment on my first Instagram post from my test drive of the new 2017 Porsche 718 Boxster. It's a big story, this car and its four-cylinder turbo motor. One just as likely to ruffle a few feathers at PCA meetings as it is to inspire hatred on Instagram among the Porsche faithful, especially among those too young to remember the 356, 912, 914, 924, 944, or 968, and those too old to know about the 919 Hybrid. In case you haven't been watching auction prices recently or missed the last running of the 24 Hours of LeMans, four-cylinder Porsches go back a long way and are winning the world's toughest endurance race as recently as this year.

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Of course, the "718" in 718 Boxster is a throwback to the 718 RSK racer from the early 1960s, the successor to the much more famous 550 Spyder. Both cars came with flat-fours, both cars had success in racing, and both cars are now worth deep in the seven-figures. It's easy to dismiss four-cylinders because they sound different, because many modern boring cars have them, and because, most of all, more displacement is always better than less displacement. Amirite? MURRICA! But, no. If history has taught us anything, it's that you should never doubt what Porsche is capable of doing with a four-cylinder engine or a turbocharger. And the 718 Boxster is no exception.

For the past 20 years the Boxster has had a naturally aspirated flat-six, but in the new 718 Boxster, the base engine is now a 2.0-liter turbocharged flat-four that makes 300 horsepower and 280 lb-ft. The Boxster S gets a 2.5-liter version with a more advanced variable geometry turbo and produces 350 horsepower and 309 lb-ft. This, in case you haven't noticed, is significantly more power than before: 35 hp over the outgoing base model and loads more torque. Specifically, the Boxster S gains 43 lb-ft over the outgoing model, and the base car picks up an extraordinary 74 lb-ft.

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Remember when the Boxster was a slow but fun car? Those days are over.

Remember when the Boxster was a slow but fun car? Those days are over. The standard Boxster, equipped with the optional PDK dual-clutch gearbox and Sport Chrono, will hit 60 mph from a standstill in 4.5 seconds. The Boxster S, when similarly equipped, will do it in four flat on the way to a 12.5-second quarter mile and a top speed of 178 mph. On a Portugese Air Force base on a cool spring day, I ran a 157-mph standing mile in the Boxster S and a 142-mph standing mile in the base car. These numbers are approximately on par with last generation's Carrera S and Carrera, respectively. While we're on the subject of numbers, let's talk Nordschleife times. The new Boxster S, equipped with Porsche Active Suspension Management, PDK, Ceramic Brakes, and Sport Chrono, ran a 7:42 lap around the Nurburgring. That was good enough to tie a Walter Rohrl-driven 997 GT3 and a 2005 Pagani Zonda S while also scrubbing16 seconds off the previous-generation Boxster S's best time.

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Not coincidentally, this was the exact model I requested to test drive along 300 miles of winding Portugese road.

Though my Graphite Blue 718 Boxster S looked very similar to the outgoing generation, the new car only shares the windshield, rear decklid, and power operated cloth roof with the old Boxster. Every other body panel is new, and the side scoops are now larger to accommodate directional inserts that shoot fresh air into either the engine intake or the air-to-water intercooler mounted on top of the engine.

To start that engine, you insert the key into the left-side ignition slot. No keyless go here. The car fires to life with a sound I haven't heard before from a Porsche . . . But I have heard it from the Subaru WRX STI. In the same way the Shelby GT350 sounds like you asked Porsche's Motorsport division to build a Mustang, the Boxster sounds like if you asked Porsche to design you a WRX. It has the familiar Porsche clatter blended with the STI's thrrrrump and, for the first time in a Boxster, a bass note. Gone is the high-pitched wail, replaced with turbo whoosh and the rhythmic bass line of a boxer four. It's different, for sure, but the change in sound is the price of progress. And yes, progress is exactly what you call an increase in power and a 14 percent gain in fuel efficiency on the EU cycle. Any changes to update the old flat-sixes would have been incremental in comparison to the giant leaps gained by going with a smaller, turbocharged engine.

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Driving the new Boxster S is a sublime experience. The engine is powerful up top and torquey down low, with peak torque arriving at just 1950 rpm and carrying all the way to 4500 rpm. Peak power arrives at 6500 rpm and only drops off by four percent at the 7500-rpm redline. Thanks to the Variable Turbo Geometry (VTG, available exclusively on 718 Boxster S and 911 Turbo), the engine's performance is optimized at every point in the rpm range. Active engine mounts soften at lower RPM to minimize vibrations in the cabin and tighten up as revs and speed climb. While adding to chassis rigidity, which is at an all time high, this also results in engine vibration that can barely be heard but not felt.

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The car feels faster everywhere from dead-stop acceleration to making a pass.

Most importantly, despite the slightly lowered redline, the powerband is now so wide thanks to "pre-spool" technology and VTG that the car feels faster everywhere from dead-stop acceleration to making a pass. Porsche's Sport Response button is another neat trick: While cruising in Drive mode, if you think you may need to make a quick maneuver, press the Sport Response button on the wheel, and the car drops a gear, goes into max performance throttle and PDK mode, and pre-spools the turbo for 20 seconds. This button is re-usable over and over again with no limit.

The PDK dual-clutch gearbox is, as usual, excellent. A six-speed manual transmission with automatic rev-matching is standard in both the Boxster and Boxster S, and as much as I love Porsche's manual gearboxes, the new powertrains really are optimized for PDK. When you tug a paddle to upshift, rather than closing the throttle for the shift, the throttle stays open and the car cuts ignition timing, a form of anti-lag that keeps the turbo spooled in between the shifts. The result is an almost completely imperceptible drop in power during shifting—just one long shove all the way from a dead stop to top speed.

The PDK shifters are positioned behind a new 918 Hybrid-style steering wheel that has a quick-selector switch to choose one of four drive modes: Normal, Sport, Sport Plus, or Individual. Suspension, exhaust volume, traction control, and other individual settings are one-touch affairs, via buttons surrounding the transmission lever. The optional PASM (Porsche Active Suspension Management) gives you a lowered ride height with adjustable dampers. Normal mode sucked up the imperfections on Western Portugal's C-roads while Sport mode brought to life the new steering system, adopted directly from the 911 Turbo and 10 percent more direct than the outgoing car. It blends the perfect balance of weight, feel, and ratio.

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When a chassis is as good as the 718's, you don't need to make the suspension overly stiff in order to make the car handle, and this is where the Boxster S really shines. The suspension gives when it needs to, stays firm when it needs to, and makes sporty driving feel effortless. The optional 350mm carbon-ceramic brakes mean late braking quickly becomes a pastime, though I sampled the standard 330mm steel brakes as well and found them more than sufficient for road use.

The new 718 Boxster and Boxster S aren't just worthy of the Porsche badge, I'd venture as far as to say these are the best Boxsters yet. They deliver outstanding performance and more impressive engineering than really should be available starting at $54,000—all while asking nearly nothing of the driver in return. After a 10-hour, top-down stint in the Boxster S, wringing out the boxer engine to redline over and over again, braving a Portugese traffic jam, doing runway pulls, covering nearly 300 miles of remote backroads, and frankly, burning as much of Porsche's complimentary premium fuel as possible, I wasn't beat up at all. The 718 Boxster S simply does everything right.

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